Chapter Sixteen: Keeping Me From Church

I don't recall what I did wrong. All I remember is that we were supposed to be going somewhere. I must have been twelve or thirteen years old, and it was time to leave. I was dressed. I was ready. My dad was waiting in the car. And I must have made one too many smart-alek comments, because she came after me. The moment that sticks in my mind is the cowering, the fists on my head, the slaps on my face. And the screaming. By looking at my face, you would never see a single scar. But my heart is covered with them.

I probably deserved most of what I got. I was a brat. A smart-alek kid. The time she came racing down the hall after me and smacked me silly? I had called her an old bat under my breath for not letting me go play with The Bolyard Boys. The time she beat me within an inch of my life? I had left the gate of the dog pen open and the two dogs were fighting, my dad just about getting his arm chewed off trying to separate them. The time she kicked my boyfriend out and never let me see him again? She caught us making out on the living room couch.

But it's not the beatings that really separate me from my mother. It's just that there really was no closeness. She's crass, humiliating and cruel. She never wasted a chance telling others what a horrible kid I was, what a spoiled brat. And even when she bragged to others about my straight A's, my being crowned Old Fashioned Days Queen, or my winning first place for my Voice of Democracy Speech, once home, I was the suspected slut, drug addict, and thief. Nothing I could do would change the suspicions. Not the fact that I never slept with a guy, never took drugs, and never stole a thing. Well, except a few dollars from my grandma's purse, but no one ever knew about that until this very moment. The fact is, I was a good kid. But my mother didn't believe that. And, in turn, I didn't believe it, either.

None of my friends were good enough. They were all boy crazy, or stuck up, or potheads. None of the guys who asked me out really wanted to have a relationship with me. They were snakes in the grass, only after one thing. I had no value as a human being. I was not worth anyone liking or getting to know. And I was certainly not good enough or to be trusted enough to have a real friend or a real boyfriend. My mother's answer to every problem was to ground me. Well, to beat me first, and then to ground me. If I lost a library book, grounded. If I came home from work five minutes late, grounded. If I tried to defend myself, grounded longer.

If she really wanted to go for the juglar, she would ground me from church. I'm so totally not kidding.

Church most likely would not have come into my life had I not become best friends with Renee Cling in kindergarten. Like most things in my childhood life, I've forgotten how Renee and I met, but we did, and spending the night at her house on the very first night was one of the most exciting and frightening things I'd done in my whole five years on this earth.

Renee's mom was a Spirit-filled Christian. If there was ever a woman who could win the world record for praying, Joy Cling would be it. Here was a woman forever volunteering for the church, always cooking or baking, spending most of her life on the phone, and yelling constantly about what a mess the house was. I picked up a few habits from this woman, though one of them is not her habit of leaving PTL on full-time.

The first night I stayed at Renee's house was not my first time away from home. Because my mom had been in and out of the hospital so much for back pain, I had spent many nights at my grandma's house, and with my Aunt Edie and Uncle Peter. These places were never fun. Aunt Edie was, and still is, a neat freak. Every single thing in the house has to be cleaned, mopped, vaccumed and dusted every single day. The best things to play with there were the Lincoln Logs and the Mad Magazines, though, eventually, the Mad Magazines were off-limits because they belonged to my cousin Donnie.

While I loved visiting my grandma's house during the day, because of the convenience store right across the street where I could buy Funyuns and Dr. Pepper, the nighttime was a different story. There were so many times when I would call my parents at midnight, feeling so homesick I couldn't sleep, and they would drive, in the night, 45 minutes to pick me up. I'm sure this was my dad's doing, and not my mom's. My mom would have insisted on leaving me there. My dad was the one who, in my mom's words, "spoiled me rotten."

This was quite a theme in our house. Mom, the disciplinarian, would announce the time.

"It's 8:00 on a school night. It's time for bed."

Dad, the lenient child-spoiler would step in.

"Oh, she's watching a t.v. program. Can't she stay up until it's over?"

Mom, who would have to be the one to wake me up five times and drive me to school when I missed the bus, would stay the course.

"She has to go to bed, so she won't be a crab butt when she gets up in the morning."

Dad, who liked to start fights and blame it on me, and who never actually grew past the age of twelve, would play the buddy game.

"You'd better go to bed, like the old bat says."

When I was a child, I thought this was funny. I also thought it was acceptable to call my mother an old bat when I was angry with her, which resulted in one of the worst beatings I ever received. I can't say that I didn't know it was wrong to say it. It's just that I figured it was at least understandable. After all, it was something my dad said all the time.

Now that my dad lives with me, I can see all of the things he did that drove my mom crazy. I mean that. He literally drove her crazy. Yeah, I'm sure there were other things that played into it, like her childhood abuse, the loss of her parents, separation from her siblings, chronic back pain, and a bunch of demons I'm sure I'll never understand, but my dad was the thing that pushed her over the proverbial edge.

I can see how my dad's prejudices could wear a person down. A woman, for example, is either "kind of pretty," or "really heavy." You will never hear the words, "kind of pretty, heavy set girl" come from my dad's mouth in the same sentence. As a child, he would embarrass both me and my mom by pointing out "heavy" women and "calling" to them as if they were my mom. "Sue! Sue, come back here! What are you doing over there?" or pointing out a large woman and then saying, "Heavy duty!" accompanied by laughter. I hated when he did that. But because of the favor that he showed me, he was my favorite parent. He would let me stay up late, he would let me sleep in his bed, he would buy me whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, no matter how much it was. When my mother wanted me to work for something, he would buy it for me without her knowledge, and it would be "our little secret." If my mother would put a limit on how much money I could have for a field trip or outing, my dad would slip me an extra ten and say, "Don't tell your mom."

My mom tried this a few times, too, but it never worked. I always felt like she was just trying to buy me back. With my dad, I knew he did it because he loved me and wanted me to have the best. Where my mom was selfish and demanding, my dad was generous and permissive. Where my mom had rules and reasons, my dad had secrets and sneakiness. In the game of "good cop, bad cop," there was no question who was who. And as I got older, this became so much clearer.

I think the thing that finally pushed it over the edge for me was when my mother decided to use church against me. What I mean by this is not that she forced me to go to church. Instead, she forced me to stay home. When I was looking forward to going to church, to learning something about my life’s plan, to making new friends and building on the friendships I’d made, my mom would pull all of it out from under me.

I probably deserved most of it. Now, dealing with my own children, I can see how hard they can push you. But then, I just thought that she was cruel. And I have to admit that part of me still does. There were so many times that I would stand in front of the mirror getting ready for church, trying with little success to cover my puffy eyes with makeup and pouring Visine into them in an attempt to mask the evidence of my crying. These were the times when Renee’s mom intervened, asking my mom to please allow me to go to church. She succeeded, and even though I didn’t feel like going, I certainly didn’t feel like staying home, either. And so I covered the red spots, poured the Visine, and pulled on my jacket, never turning back to say “goodbye.”